Bolthole

by Jeff Mariotte

  “What are you doing to find him?”

  “Everything we can. G and I are on our way to talk to someone who used to know him. Kind of hard to find people who know him now when the guy’s officially been dead for years. Just figured since we were in the neighborhood, we’d stop in and make sure you’re okay. Anything you need?”

  “My life back? A girlfriend? A million bucks?”

  Sam thought about the cash he had delivered to the OSP earlier. A million bucks was the most feasible of his requests. Still not something Sam was empowered to grant. But at least he’d had it in his hands, just hours earlier. He slapped Martin on the shoulder. “We’re doing what we can, man. Hope to have you back in your own life soon, okay?”

  Martin let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know. I appreciate it, brother.”

  “Just hang tight. Soon as we have this wrapped up, we’ll let you know.”

  Outside again, Callen said, “Brother? I didn’t know you guys were so close.”

  “We’re both SEALs. That’s a bond of brotherhood that doesn’t end.”

  “Three of those contractors were Special Forces,” Callen pointed out.

  “Not SEALs. Makes a difference.”

  “So you trust Kelly Martin implicitly? Because of that bond?”

  “With my life,” Sam said.

  Callen tilted his head and eyed his partner. The sun was high in the sky and the day was another scorcher, but the guy was hardly sweating. “Really? With your life? You don’t even know him.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You don’t get to be what he is without having a core of steel.”

  “People change,” Callen said. They’d reached the car, and Callen opened the passenger door. “People change, and they disappoint, and sometimes they seem to be something they’re not.”

  Sam shot him a grin. “I trust you with my life, G. And you spend half your life being someone you’re not.”

  “You’re pretty good at it yourself.”

  Sam slid in behind the wheel, and Callen took his seat, buckling in. “What can I say?” Sam asked with a grin as he started the car. “We get paid to have ongoing identity crises.”

  “Better than being actors, I guess,” Callen said. “They have to do the same thing, but we get to shoot guns and chase bad guys.”

  “So do actors, sometimes. But it’s all make-believe for them. At least we get to deal in reality once in a while.”

  Sam pulled away from the curb and started down the street. “Let’s see what the reality of someone who served with Hal Shogren is like. Pretty dark, would be my guess.”

  39

  Kelly Martin was beyond bored.

  When he’d retired, with his full military pension, Bobby Sanchez had ridden him without mercy. He was a warrior, and when a warrior had no war, he had nothing. He’d play a lot of golf and get fat, Bobby had said. Or he’d sit on a couch, watching TV and drinking beer, and get fat. Somehow, Bobby’s worst-case scenarios always involved Martin getting fat.

  Martin had argued that he would stay busy—and stay in shape. He had plenty of buddies in the private sector, and some of them were raking in three and four times what the Navy paid. He could always get a job, if it came to that, and make his ultimate old-age retirement that much more secure. Or he could write a book—lots of Spec Ops guys were doing that, these days, and cashing some pretty nice checks. He could play sports. He could take classes, get an advanced degree. He could travel the world without having people trying to kill him in every port.

  Okay, that part hadn’t yet turned out to be true. In fact, most of it hadn’t.

  It had only been a few months, though. He worked out every day. He took a few trips, saw some friends. He caught up on movies and books he’d missed. Once in a while, he provided security for a buddy who owned a nightclub, and that gig netted him a few under-the-table bucks and plenty of hot ladies.

  But as the weeks became months, he’d started to think Bobby was right. More and more, he found himself staying home, fiddling around in the yard, binge-watching some TV series, scrolling through photos of his SEAL days. It didn’t take much imagination to picture him winding up just like he was here in the safehouse: eating junk food and watching daytime TV, until it was night and the nighttime TV came on. A few hours of sleep, and he would get up and start another day just like the one before. The one after that would be more of the same.

  It was no life for him. Hell, he’d have been better off letting those guys kill him at the Sea Vue than existing like this. The hours dragged by, painfully slowly and dull.

  Being cooped up in the safehouse made it even worse. He’d been instructed not to reach out to friends, not to leave the house even to sit in the backyard. But he wasn’t used to letting other people fight his battles. Bobby had been right. He was a warrior, and he wasn’t good at anything else. He needed to stay in the game.

  Sam Hanna had said that his team were professionals, with law enforcement authority. They’d treated him well. And from what Hanna said earlier, it sounded like they were good at their jobs. They’d found Shogren, Wehling, Brower, and Faulk—the guys who’d killed Bobby—and recovered the stolen Sumerian tablet, all in an impressively short time. It only seemed like forever because of his own circumstances.

  They were good at their jobs, but not perfect. They’d let Shogren get away. And it had been clear, even back in Ramadi on that fateful night in 2007, that Shogren was the boss.

  Which meant Shogren was the most responsible for Bobby’s death.

  Shogren was out there, and he was stuck in here, like a fish in an aquarium, without so much as a plastic diver or a treasure chest.

  He glanced over at the TV and saw a red BREAKING NEWS banner at the bottom of the screen, and he watched the words scrolling by…

  * * *

  Betsy Peabody had never been so frightened.

  There had been times in her life she had thought she’d experienced fear as bad as it could possibly be. The time she’d been pregnant with Susan and come down with pre-eclampsia, which her OB/GYN warned her could be fatal to her and the baby. They’d both survived, but it had been touch-and-go for a while. Then there was the time she’d had a late-night phone call from a police officer, informing her that Hugh had been in an automobile accident and was heading into the operating room.

  But as terrified as she’d been on those occasions, she had been able to reassure herself with the fact that no one was actively working against her. Those had been uncontrollable events, but without human malice behind them. Even Hugh’s accident had been due to a patch of black ice on the road. He’d lost control of the car and rolled three times, down an embankment. The only other people involved were the police, emergency workers, and doctors, and they had all been focused on saving Hugh.

  This time was different, because she was at the mercy of an evil man with a gun, and she knew—down to the very core of her, she was certain—that he would rather find an excuse to kill her than a reason to let her live.

  She had never liked Hal Shogren, from the first moment she’d met him. When she’d been growing up, boys like him had been called hoods. They were tough guys who favored white undershirts and leather jackets, who slicked their hair back, and probably carried switchblade knives. The first time she’d seen Hal, who’d come home from school with Susan, he hadn’t been dressed like that, and she doubted he had a switchblade. A .45, maybe.

  But the attitude had been the same. Even at that age, he acted like the world owed him something, and he had every intention of collecting. No matter who got in the way, or who got hurt.

  She’d been afraid, then, that it would be Susan who got hurt, because it was obvious from the start that she was taken with him. Betsy didn’t understand the appeal. He wasn’t sensitive in the least. He was arrogant, narcissistic, and cynical far beyond his years. He spoke constantly about who had it in for him, who was out to get him, and what he’d do to them if they tried. Betsy had considered them nothing but fantasies, albeit extremely viol
ent ones, full of vivid descriptions of what would amount to torture if he’d actually followed through. Somehow, Susan had found it romantic. She supposed Bonnie Parker had felt the same way about Clyde Barrow, and look where that got her.

  She’d tried to warn Susan about him, but sometimes talking to a teenage girl about the danger posed by a boy only pushed her faster and harder into his arms. And that scared her, too, because having survived Susan’s gestation and infancy and at least the first part of her adolescence, she could see her only daughter drawn into his sphere of influence, like a dinghy being sucked into a whirlpool, and when everything she and Hugh had tried to do to dissuade her had failed, there was nothing left but surrender. Susan was tugged into the whirlpool, and the hand she’d extended had been batted away. Then there was nothing to do but watch and mourn.

  Now her worst fears for Susan had come true. She lay on a slab in a morgue somewhere, and it was Shogren’s fault, as surely as if he had pulled the trigger. As if that wasn’t enough, now he did have an actual gun pointed at her, and his finger was once again on the trigger, and she knew it wouldn’t take much to convince him to pull it. The moment she stopped being useful to him would be her last.

  He told her where to drive, and she drove there. She tried to go fast, because he said to, but not so fast that she attracted the attention of the police. Every time she saw a police car, she was tempted to try to signal, even to crash into it. But that wouldn’t save her. The car could be surrounded, escape impossible, but he would still kill her before he let himself be taken.

  Because he had recognized her almost at once, and he had never liked her.

  She and Hugh had been sitting in the Buick, waiting for Agent Blye to come back out of the driveway they’d seen her and the other agent going up. Hugh liked the big bands channel on the satellite radio, so they’d been listening to that, loud, and it was so hot out that they had the engine running so the air would keep blowing. If there was any noise from inside the house, they hadn’t heard it.

  But she was sure there must have been, because of what happened next.

  The big black military-style truck had careened down the driveway, coming to a screeching halt when the driver saw that the exit was blocked. He had sat inside it for a full minute after that. The motion of the vehicle had caught her attention, so she was watching, wondering what it was all about. When the driver didn’t get out, given the way he’d approached, she suspected he was considering whether he ought to try to ram his way through. Then he decided against it. He opened the door and climbed down, and Betsy felt her heart speed up. Then he reached back in and brought out a long black duffel bag, and that gun, and she grabbed Hugh’s leg hard enough to leave marks.

  Already, by that point, she feared that it was too late—that the man’s path and hers were on some kind of collision course. She tried to look away, hoping he wouldn’t notice them across the street. But it was clear that he had, and as he stalked directly toward them she realized who it was. Her grip on Hugh’s thigh might have broken the skin at that point. He was aware of what was happening by then, and trying to start the car. But of course it was already running, and all he was doing was grinding the engine.

  “That’s Hal,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Hal Shogren. The boy Agent Blye was asking us about.”

  “Doesn’t look like a boy.”

  “Well, he’s not anymore. Susan’s not a girl, either.”

  “Susan’s dead,” Hugh reminded her.

  She lost what was left of her composure then. “Do you think I don’t know that?” she cried.

  Hugh started to say something in response, and at the same time tried to put the car in gear, having figured out that the engine was already engaged. But Shogren had reached them. Betsy finally thought to lock the doors, but too late. He yanked Hugh’s door open and punched him in the face, without warning. Hugh cried out and fell against her. She caught his shoulders and tried to hold onto him, but Shogren got a grip on his shirt and hauled him from the car, sending him sprawling into the street. Hugh’s glasses flew off and skidded across the pavement, and she could see then that the first blow had broken them. Hugh’s face was cut and bleeding, and she started to scream, hoping to attract the attention of Agent Blye.

  Or really, anyone.

  But no one came. It was just her and Shogren, and he had a gun that looked wicked, like something forged in the fires of Hell, and there was blood all over his clothing and spattered on his face, and she knew it wasn’t his blood. He shoved his bag into the back, sat down, pointed that gun at her, and growled, “Get behind the wheel.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  “Do it now, or I’ll shoot your ass and take the car anyway.”

  She looked at Hugh, still sprawled in the street, pawing for his glasses. She knew if she didn’t do what Shogren said, he would kill her and then, realizing that Hugh was a witness, kill him, too. He couldn’t know how blind Hugh was without his glasses. Even with them, he never would have recognized Shogren if she hadn’t named the man for him.

  The only way to keep Hugh alive was to do what he said. She scooted awkwardly over the center console and settled in the driver’s seat. Then she thought of the pictures she had come so far to deliver to Agent Blye.

  Those, she reasoned, were her only hope. Hugh would get the pictures to Agent Blye, and Shogren would take her to his family’s old cabin, and Agent Blye and her colleagues would show up in the nick of time to save her life.

  That was unlikely, even on TV. But she clung to it anyway, because she had to hold onto a glimmer of hope. Hugh had always called her his “incurable optimist.” She embraced the tag; she hadn’t wanted to be cured of optimism, after all. Optimists, she thought, considered optimism a positive trait.

  So he directed her and she drove. When they neared a police roadblock, at the base of the hills on the Valley side, he told her to swerve down an alley instead. At the end of that alley, he told her to cut across the street, into the next alley. Three blocks later, the alley connected to a dirt road. She complained that the Buick wasn’t made for dirt roads, but he said it was a good American car and could take anything thrown at it.

  She wasn’t so sure. But he was the man with the gun. So she tried to swallow her fear, which grew worse when she realized that he really was telling her to drive straight into where the fire blazed, and she put her foot on the gas and she drove.

  40

  Calvin Meadows had an office on the lot of Continental Pictures. The studio had once been one of Hollywood’s biggest names, but the industry had changed and Continental hadn’t always changed with it. Now the backlot had been sold off to real estate developers, and tall buildings loomed behind the remaining office buildings and sound stages. Having faced its near-death experience and survived, the business had finally adjusted to the new era of entertainment, and had become a major source of streaming programs for multiple online outlets.

  Just as at the few big studio lots remaining, there was a gate with a uniformed guard. Callen and Sam waited in the line of cars while the guard chatted with a pretty blonde driving a red Tesla sedan. Eventually, she drove off with a three-fingered wave, and the guard got to work again. He checked their IDs and gave them directions to Meadows’s office.

  It was a pink building, which didn’t narrow it down much, since almost all the buildings on the lot were pink. It was behind Sound Stage 14, which narrowed it down, as the sound stages were lined up along a single road, odd numbers on the left and evens on the right. The confusing part was that 14 was on the left.

  It struck a chord of memory somewhere in Callen’s brain. “I think I heard something about that once,” he said as Sam swung the car around the huge building. “There was some kind of disaster on stage thirteen, maybe back in the forties or fifties. A fire or an explosion, something like that. One of the studio’s biggest stars was killed, along with a few lesser luminaries. The powers that be decided it was because they’d h
ad the temerity to paint the number thirteen on the end of a building, so they painted that out and made this one number fourteen.”

  “Might have made more sense to fire the pyrotechnics team,” Sam said.

  “Welcome to Hollywood.”

  Meadows’s building had a sign on the front that said “Merrill & Sons Productions.” Sam laughed when he saw it.

  “What’s funny?” Callen asked.

  “Army Rangers like to trace their lineage to General Frank Merrill, who commanded the World War Two unit that became known as Merrill’s Marauders. They were part of the Burma campaign. They fought their way through some of the toughest jungle on the planet, battling the Japanese every step of the way. They’re legendary in military history. So the “Merrill” is Frank, and the sons are the rest of the Rangers.”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Callen said. “There was a movie, right?”

  “A classic. Merrill deserves to be remembered. So do his men. It’s quite a tradition to live up to.”

  He eased the Challenger into one of the parking spaces in front of the building. Because this was Hollywood, the red Tesla was already parked and plugged into a charging station.

  Inside, a Japanese-American receptionist greeted them—proving, Callen figured, that old enemies could come together. The kid was probably in his twenties, and it was possible that he’d never heard of Merrill or his Marauders and had no idea what the company name meant. But since the company was owned by an ex-Ranger, Callen suspected that every staffer heard the story sooner or later.

  Sam badged the kid, whose name, according to a nameplate on his desk, was Leo Nakamura. “Here to see Mr. Meadows,” Sam said.

  “You have an appointment?”

  “Yeah. We told him we were coming over, and we’d see him when we got here.”

  “He’s very busy,” Nakamura said. “I can check with—”

  A door opened on the far side of Nakamura’s desk, and a tall African-American man smiled across the way at them. “It’s okay, Leo. Come on in, Agents.”